1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a material handling system and, more particularly, to a system for packaging, transporting and sorting mail and other material for routing and delivery.
2. Background Description
In most modem postal facilities, major steps have been taken toward mechanization (e.g., automation) of the delivery of mail, packages and other items. These machines and technologies include, amongst others, letter sorters, facer-cancelers, automatic address readers, parcel sorters, advanced tray conveyors, flat sorters, letter mail coding and stamp-tagging techniques and the like. As a result of these developments, postal facilities have become quite automated over the years, considerably reducing overhead costs.
However, large volume mailers such as publishers are still saddled with a long and involved process in their facilities that involve substantial labor to deliver flats (i.e., magazines, flyers, books, and the like) in a cost efficient manner. First, mail must be sorted to certain depths in order to obtain reduced postal rates, and this sorting process can involve many special considerations such as sorting by size and destination. But, the overhead involved with preparing large amounts of flats for mailing is often related to the rates that the mailer is attempting to achieve. For example, if there is a large amount of mail to one particular destination neighborhood, the mailer can attempt to pre-sort mail in a bundle for the neighborhood mail carrier, even sorting to a depth matching the sequence of the delivery route. This is among the lowest cost rates available. If the mailer actually delivers the sorted bundles to the appropriate neighborhood post office, the rates are even better.
However, there are a host of mailing rates and sorting possibilities that might affect the postal rates. By way of illustrations, mailers can elect to sort the mail or flats to various levels of granularity, or depth, depending on the costs and volumes involved. If mail is sorted to the level of a given central post office processing facility, it is one rate. If the mail it is further sorted to particular post office destinations, it is a better rate. If still the mail is sorted by a carrier route within a post office, it is yet a better rate.
However, the overhead to perform these types of sorting and packaging with accuracy and with flexibility is very labor intensive particularly when various shipping bundle sizes result, which can, in turn, aggravate the shipping process. More specifically, mail flats are typically bound together to facilitate shipping and handling. However, varying bundle sizes can result in the shipping becoming particularly inefficient. Moreover, current practice typically calls for rotating sections of flats within a bundle in order to keep the bundles of uniform length, overall. If the rotation does not occur, the spines or bound edges, which are thicker than the non-bound edges, may cause a “banana” effect or a tipping of the product when stacked at the publishing facilities. To ensure that the “banana” effect or tipping does not occur, the mailer will either tightly wrap the bundle or, more commonly, assemble the stacks of their product in a counter rotated bundle, i.e., with the bound edges rotated every so many pieces in order to maintain a straight stack. In the former stacking process, the product is bound so tightly with several straps, shrink wrap and the like that the product is damaged during the bundling and transportation process. By using the counter rotation procedure, however, a mail sorting facility, whether it be a postal facility or other delivery or transportation facility, must reorient the stacks so that all of the bound edges are aligned.
These bundles are typically stacked on pallets for mass transport to mail facilities. Because of the potential different bundle sizes or even with similar bundle sizes, the pallets themselves can be of unpredictable sizes with inconsistent packing arrangements that may not be easy to unpack at the postal facilities. These pallets are typically unloaded manually and then the bundles opened by hand for entry into the sorting processes at the mail facility. This is very labor intensive. Little standardization of the bundling and palletization currently exist.
The present invention provides solutions to the shortcomings of current mail handling processes.